Las comidas estas muchas deliciosos! (Translated from Spanish: The food is very delicious!)

Oh my gosh. Last night, Tao and I went to Lauda's parent's house for an authentic Spanish dinner. We ended up having real chalupas for dinner! (Flat deep fried hard tortilla shells topped with goodies.) Lauda's mom cooked everything from scratch. From scratch! We had refried beans, guacamole, chicken, beef, etc. etc. The only things that she didn't make were the 3 sauces - green salsa, pepper salsa, and tomato salsa. They were SO DELICIOUS! *dies* I ate so many, as did Tao and Lauda. The nicest thing about them was the variety of toppings that were available. I'm used to eating Mexican food with the same generic toppings (Old El Paso sauce, lettuce, cheese, and tomatos - nothing else). However, when you added the other things like refried beans etc., they added a nice new texture/consistency and subtle flavours. It was mucho delicioso!

After dinner, they prepared us some drinks. Lauda informed us that having alcohol with every meal is a very normal thing to do in Latin America. Her father therefore made me some Kahlua with cream. This is when another cultural difference came into play. I'm used to my Kahlua cocktails where it's like ¾ milk, ¼ kahlua. I pretty much got the opposite mix for my drink. I could barely sip the beverage because there was so much alcohol in it. But trust me, I got it all down. :-)

Amusing anecdote: While chilling in the kitchen, I happened to get a glimpse into the cupboard holding their liquor. I immediately laughed out loud. Right beside their stockpile of liquor was their stockpile of prescribed medications. Excellent combination.

And then, to make things even better, her mom had made this AMAZING dessert too! It was vanilla ice cream with some kind of soul-eating crumbly stuff on top! Soul-eating not a good enough description? Well then. I believe the crumble stuff was a mixture of flour, pecans, brown sugar and butter. And on top of the crumbly stuff was even more soul-eating goodness. Caramel sauce. It was frozen all together and absolutely amazing. I'm glad we only had a bit, because it was so rich, any more would kill us.

After we were done gorging, we retired to the deck to watch the sun set. As you can see from the photo, it was a gorgeous view! What a perfect evening!

One of my fave pics from the night: Spider in the sun.